> Btw, I understand your philosophical concerns, but isn't it the case
> that: 1) an unscrupulous company could scan our disks anyway and most of
> us would have no clue, 2) their proposed EULA did NOT give them
> permission to look at anything that wasn't EQ-related, and 3) they're
> much too sloppy and overburdened to go through the hassle which would
> be required to actually make use of any other information? I think you
> give them too much credit if you think they're capable of doing anything
> other than keeping their heads above water.
Umm actually that's not the point but I'll make this clear:
Some of us that play EQ work for companies that made us sign non-disclosure
agreements regarding the companies intellectual properties. That means, if
I take work home, and I let someone see what I'm doing. My company can come
sue me. Now, if some company does it without my knowledge (IE: Hacks my
system) then my company will sue them, not me. But if I sign an agreement
letting a company scan the contents of my active memory and some sensitive
data happens to be in there then *I* am responsible and I can lose my job
and wind up in jail. (not that it's likely, but it is possible).
Asside from that little nastiness there is the issue of personal privacy.
It's not *my* fault that some moron out there is hacking EQ. That's
Verant's problem. The fact remains that they could scan my memory and
active tasks and just shut down EQ if it has whatever they're looking for.
If it doesn't I play as normal. This way no data is being transmitted from
my computer that may be sensitive.
And, yes, I DO know exactly what gets sent across my network, through my
firewall and to anyone connected to my PC. I busted AOL trying it a while
back when my roomate used it and I caught Verant's little shinanigan's as
well. I'm a network engineer by trade, network security is part of my job
;)
> Kenross Cantoforjado, 47 songs, Innoruuk
>
> PS - Perhaps having to deal with a paranoid schizophrenic ex has made me
> overly sensitive to conspiracy theories. It's pretty hard to live in
> this world when you distrust everyone's motives all the time. Much
> better just to distrust everyone's competence. Works for me.
It's not that I distrust their motives. It's that they are violating my
private property. And accessing *my* intellectual rights. It's not that I
don't trust Verant. It's that I don't want someone else saying "But it was
ok when Verant did it for their game! I want to do it for X". Where does
it stop? Something people don't seem to realize, once you give up a thing,
it's VERY hard to take it back again. I personally choose not to allow that
level of personal privacy to be violated. My PC is like my car. I'm not
likely to give VI the keys to my car am I?
This is all moot now anyway ;) Since they decided to be smart and not
implement their system scan (which was a scan of the active task list (API
32 Call) and the contents of active memory).
Kevin L. Crawford